my favorite favorite stanford classified ad popped up in the campus daily a few years ago and offered stranded students the opportunity to serve techies thanksgiving dinner for like $20 and some leftover turkey. my other favorite, courtesy of the latest alumni magazine: good genes, "an institution of higher pairing". mental image of stuffing kleenex down the front of one's resume: i like it.

if commentary is to be believed, radiohead's "palo alto" moonlighted as "ok computer". i tired of pop's mid-nineties fixation on paly a while back, but i suppose it's pleasant to feel that one slept and ate junk food in a notable place.

It is a lovely city and it works: it has given the world far more than it has ever taken, and to find any fault would be gratuitous and petty. It is the embodiment of middle-class tranquility and freedom. It is Palo Alto, or a platonic vision of a city like this, that lurks in the back of many minds as the ideal that is worth fighting for when fighting is called for.

(douglas coupland, polaroids from the dead)

speaking of radiohead, i have similar memories of oxford, though its souvenirs have been rather more substantial.

coupland dug up the paly piece for a prospective frosh talk in memorial auditorium, 5/96. he also introduced me, after a fashion, to my good friend tom, who asked him a convoluted question that he (d.c.) interrupted with his forehead and the microphone: "brain hurts, brain hurts". he's getting a JD in wisconsin and owed a lot of mail (tom).

the seventh sign that i'm getting old: i slept like a champ all day. sundays kick ass.